This. Also, regarding the time it will require, it's usually (for anything self-hosted, I haven't tried those two) a downward curve : it takes a lot of time to understand how things work initially, and after that it takes less and less time, to the point where the only things you have to do is to manage updates once in a while. With an occasional big day because something broke. Of course, I'm saying this because you said it's just for you and your friends, if you start doing moderation, the time required quickly explode up. :)

A note regarding self hosting at home : even if you figure you do have a static IP and can route traffic to your host, it's a bit of a roulette, because ISPs consider that high incoming traffic on listening ports is a suspicious activity which probably means you're a terrorist or something, normal people don't do that, how dare you. I've had a ISP block traffic between friends and me with no warning and a laughably ignorant support (if anyone is from France, it's SFR ; don't use them for self-hosting with external access) before giving up and subscribing to a professional ISP (one meant for businesses). Your mileage may vary, but the annoying thing is that you won't know it before you've got used to your services.

I just checked out YUNoHost, which sounds like an excellent stepping stone, thanks for the recommendation! I'll go with a VPS, so ISP shouldn't be a concern. I think, I'll just try it out - at worst I'll lose a couple of hours of my time ;)

I started with YUNOhost to gain some experience with selfhosting. Along with that I would recommend to read through some security best practices to cover some basic pitfalls.